


Battlefield

by consulting_teabag



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Other, Past Torture, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2014-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-13 20:55:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2164872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consulting_teabag/pseuds/consulting_teabag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes doesn't have a body anymore, he has a battlefield.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Battlefield

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Just a very short ficlet whilst I adjust myself to this format!

Sherlock Holmes doesn’t have a body anymore. He has a battlefield. Where soft, pure skin clashes with the jagged spaces of traumatised flesh. The expanse is slowly becoming a grim memorial to the things he did for John Watson; the things he did for love. To Sherlock, they are like a tally chart etched into his skin, a tally that counts the number of times he had to think of John to stay alive.

It’s been months now, and the youngest scars have faded slightly; their soft, raw pink colours stand out from the ghostly white of the rest. They ache in the morning when he first gets up, but they usually settle after an hour, and Sherlock tries his best to ignore them. But sometimes he doesn’t, or at least, they make it impossible to be ignored.

There’s a full length mirror in Sherlock’s room; it’s on the front of his dark oaken wardrobe, and it’s like a magnet. 

Before he vanished for two years, Sherlock would stand before the mirror and adjust his scarf or tweak his hair, but now when he stands before it he is usually wearing nothing at all except for his scars. 

Finding an angle, so that the late afternoon sunlight could obscure his face and highlight his upper body, the man stares at his healing wounds, recalling the moments they became a part of him. His slender fingers run across them uneasily, as though he is frightened the skin will break, sensing the rise and fall of his spinal cord. His lips are slightly open, dry as bone, as he explores his body again.

He wishes he were not alone, he wishes John was beside him; kissing him, thanking him. But John is unavailable, too swept up in the life he constructed whilst Sherlock was away. The detective’s heartbeat flutters as he twists to get a better view. In his eyes, he isn’t dissimilar to an impressionist painting, with his mottled back resembling the splotches of paint on canvas.

With his eyes closed, he traces over them once again, wincing as memories flood back into him. There are different scars on his body: the aging needle pricks on his arms, and the even older scars on his kneecaps from when he was learning how to ride a bicycle. He wants John to see them too. He wants to know what John would say, do, think. But Sherlock accepts he shall never truly know, no matter how much he wants to, not matter how much not knowing will bother him. 

With a longing, aching sigh, Sherlock turns back to the bed, on which lie his usual crisp white shirt and charcoal trousers; he must get dressed, he has a case to solve. 


End file.
